As tropical rainforests are cleared, forest remnants are increasingly isolated within agricultural landscapes. Understanding how forest loss impacts on species diversity can, therefore, contribute to identifying the minimum amount of habitat required for biodiversity maintenance in human-modified landscapes. Here, we evaluate how the amount of forest cover, at the landscape scale, affects patte...

The dry forests of northeastern Brazil are found near the coastal zone and on low, isolated mountains inland amid semi-arid vegetation. The floristic composition of these dry montane forests, as well as their relationship to humid forests (Atlantic forest sensu stricto) and to the deciduous thorn woodlands (Caatinga sensu stricto) of the Brazilian northeast are not yet well known. This paper so...

Phosphorus solubilizing microorganisms are capable of transforming insoluble phosphorus (P) forms to soluble and bioavailable P. The aim of the present study was to isolate P solubilizing bacteria from forest soils around the rock phosphate (RP) mine of Koh-e-SepidLar in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer Ahmad province and evaluate their ability in Sperber culture medium and wheat straw medium in the presen...

fragmentation, or breaking apart of habitats, is one of the major causes of decline in biological diversity. mature ecosystems, especially dense forests are very sensitive to this phenomenon and roads are one of the major causes of fragmentation in forest landscapes. present investigation aims to trace landscape fragmentation in dense forests of golestan national park in northeast of iran betwe...

1. Land use (e.g. urbanization, agriculture, natural lands management) may directly affect populations by habitat loss and fragmentation, and indirectly by altering conditions needed for reproductive success. The effects of urbanization are especially pronounced for populations that remain among urbanized areas, but they are difficult to detect in long-lived species. 2. We evaluated the effects...

The context in which a forest exists strongly influences its function and sustainability. Unveiling the multi-scale nature of forest fragmentation context is crucial to understand how human activities affect the spatial patterns of forests across a range of scales. However, this issue remains almost unexplored in subtropical ecosystems. In this study, we analyzed temporal changes (1979-2010) in...

*Correspondence: Valérie Coudrain, Research Center Agroscope, Reckenholzstrasse 191, 8046 Zürich, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] Habitat amount and patch isolation are important determinants of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. We studied the separate and interactive effects of these two components of habitat fragmentation on host-parasitoid interactions in a replicated landscape...

Bacteria and fungi naturally coexist in various environments including forest ecosystems. While the role of saprotrophic basidiomycetes in wood decomposition is well established, the influence of these fungi on the functional diversity of the wood-associated bacterial communities has received much less attention. Based on a microcosm experiment, we tested the hypothesis that both the presence o...